With the thirtieth Royal Rumble taking place tomorrow night at 7:00 pm EST on the WWE Network, and with said Rumble shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable wrestling events in years, it’s interesting to look at exactly how it has evolved over the years. I’ll also include some of my armchair booking predictions for this year’s match.

From about 1988 to 1990, the Rumble itself wasn’t a huge deal. In fact, it wasn’t even the main event in 1988. And even though 1991 saw the introduction of the Wrestlemania main event promise to the winner and 1992 had the title itself on the line, things didn’t start getting really interesting until 1995. Prior to this, the Rumble was successful, but it was treated as more of a Survivor Series and less as a SummerSlam, in terms of buy rates, 1995 marked the beginning of a decade (not counting 1998, because the Austin-McMahon stuff was turned up to eleven during that summer) where the Royal Rumble was second only to Wrestlemania as far as pay-per-view buys are concerned.

Aside from that weird time Vince McMahon won (thank you, Vince Russo), the winner’s from that time frame were clearly “the guy” – you know, the guy that runs the show, the guy that Raw revolves around, the guy that’s the face of the company. Just look at the names: Shawn Michaels (x2), Stone Cold Steve Austin (x3), Vince McMahon (dammit Russo), Triple H, Brock Lesnar, Chris Benoit (mostly transitional to try to prop up Randy Orton as the next “the guy”), and Batista (even though John Cena wound up being “the guy”, it is painfully obvious that Batista was the first choice if you watched Raw that year. Also, I’ll try to limit my use of “the guy” and parenthetical asides for the remainder of the article. Don’t say I never gave you anything.). Those are all recognizable names, even to non-wrestling fans.

The next year saw the ascension of John Cena to his indisputable position as the face of the WWE. Wrestlemania was going to revolve around him despite the Rumble. Winners for the next several years wound up being performers who didn’t really need it. Shawn Michaels’ wins catapulted him into the main event scene. Austin’s did the same and were an inevitable part of the era-defining storyline. The wins in the back half of the 00’s were important, but they were given to wrestlers like Randy Orton, John Cena, or the Undertaker, all of which were already established main event talents. Alberto Del Rio and Sheamus wins with unimportant or uninteresting Wrestlemania payoffs further pushed what should be an unpredictable and exciting event into a sense of complacency.

This year feels different.

One of the most prevalent topics on /r/squaredcircle and other online wrestling forums is just how unpredictable the Royal Rumble is this year. I’m not alone in the sentiment that I genuinely have no idea who is going to win. With talent at an all-time high and with storylines rapidly improving (especially on SmackDown Live), this Royal Rumble will likely be something special. Here are some of my predictions for a few of the confirmed participants:

Goldberg & Brock Lesnar – It’s clear that Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar is the end game for a Wrestlemania match. It’s likely that one of them will clear the ring when the other enters the ring. Neither of them will win.

Big E, Kofi Kingston, & Xavier Woods – As much as I’d love for Kofi to get a win, he won’t. Nobody from the New Day will. Kofi will do what Kofi always does and make one of the most memorable moments of the night, but ultimately none of them will win. My theory on Kofi doing his thing: Kofi somehow winds up on the barricade having never touched the ground. Big E literally throws him back into the ring, maybe carrying him around outside for a while.

Chris Jericho – The US Champion might actually win it. He deserved to a few years ago, and he’s certainly one of the most well-received components of Raw. His hinting at a Universal Championship shot makes this a possible win.

Braun Strowman – This is another possible win. He’s likely going to be the dominating monster that takes multiple participants to topple. He’s going to share this distinction with Baron Corbin. I see those two taking on the roles of Big Show and Kane. Expect the commentary team to talk about how they’re the odds-on favorites to win.

Baron Corbin – See above. He’s going to do a lot of damage, but he won’t win. He’s going to be eliminated by Kalisto.

The Undertaker – This is a possible win. In all honesty, this would be the closest to a predictable win that I can see in this Rumble. There’s no doubt that he has given more to the business and the WWE in particular than anybody, but he really doesn’t need this win. If Goldberg and Brock don’t eliminate one another, Taker needs to eliminate them both. However he is eliminated will likely define his match at Wrestlemania.

The Miz – He won’t win but he’s going to be the best at working the crowd. This is because there is currently nobody better at working the crowd. Every Miz feud since this summer has been must-watch television. While he shouldn’t win, he definitely needs to have some sort of impact. It won’t hurt if he does some yes chants or comes out to Daniel Bryan’s music. Please let that happen.

Dolph Ziggler – This past summer I would have sworn this was Ziggler’s year to win the Rumble. He is an astounding in-ring performer. With his recent heel turn, I don’t know if the win is there for him. Heel’s have won in the past, such as with Austin’s first win, but Ziggler hasn’t been tearing the roster apart the way Stone Cold did leading up to his win.

Cesaro & Sheamus – This is where this fantastic team falls apart. Neither will win. One will eliminate the other and this will lead to a Wrestlemania match.

Bray Wyatt, Randy Orton, Luke Harper – Okay, I’ve been playing too safe. Here goes something wild: Orton and Harper team up and eliminate Bray Wyatt. Bray’s been looking strong the past few PPV’s, so it’ll be interesting to see how they maintain that (or if they maintain that) with the Harper/Orton rivalry that has been brewing.

Sami Zayn – This isn’t Sami Zayn’s year. I want it. You want it. If he hadn’t lost the last man standing match with Strowman I’d think it’d be him. Even though he won’t win, he will Heluva Kick Braun out of the match and regain some steam though. Lord knows Sami needs it.

Potential NXT Callups – Nobody from NXT will win, but I think we’re going to get Tye Dillinger, Bobby Roode, and Samoa Joe. Let me rephrase that: I HOPE we get Tye Dillinger, Bobby Roode, and Samoa Joe. Those three would have an incredible impact on any roster and would make for unforgettable moments.

Dean Ambrose – If you asked me who would win in December, I would say Dean Ambrose without hesitation. Out of every member of the Shield, he managed to look the best at the end of 2016. He’s currently the Intercontinental Champion, which means a lot of people don’t think he’s going to win. I personally consider him my personal pick to win. I think he’s the right guy and it’s the right time. I’m not sure what repercussions this will have for the IC belt, but I feel like it’ll find it’s way to Corbin or Ziggler as Ambrose pursues a World Championship.

For tonight’s main event, I present one of my favorite sports games! Well, “sports entertainment” games, anyway.

If you’ve been a longtime reader of our site, then you may know that one of my guilty pleasures is classic pro wrestling, particularly from the mid 70s to the mid 90s. In the 80s and early 90s, the WWF was a parade of colorful, wild characters, and they seemed to live in their own self-contained realm. It was a world of impossible possibilities. The sports entertainment industry was engaged in a cold war during this era, which peaked during the Monday Night Wars (so called because WWF and WCW’s flagship shows both aired on Monday nights and thus competed for ratings). You may not know anything about that, and you may not even care. I respect that. However, if you played video games in the early 90s, you probably at least shook hands with WWF Royal Rumble on your Genesis or SNES.

SNES box art.

Box art for the Genesis version.

Royal Rumble is named after the popular event held every January by what is now known as the WWE. Unlike a typical pro wrestling match (two wrestlers or two tag teams competing to pin one another for a 3 count), the Rumble is an event that can include up to 40 (but usually 20-30) wrestlers. A wrestler is eliminated if he goes over the top rope for any reason. This general idea existed before, but it had every single wrestler in the ring as the match began… and made for one big visual clusterfuck for the fans. Longtime WWF employee Pat Patterson came up with the idea of having two wrestlers start off, then having new grapplers enter the ring at timed intervals. This allowed for a longer-lasting and more exciting product.

Magazine ad for the SNES game. It hit the shelves a couple months before the Genesis version.

This same excitement carries over pretty well into the video game, which was released for both the Genesis/Mega Drive and the SNES. It was developed by Sculptured Software, a company that later assimilated into Acclaim. LJN published the game for both systems. While LJN is well-known among retro gamers as an infamous peddler of turd sandwiches (if you want an example, check out their NES cartridge for Back to the Future), they kept their hands off the nuts & bolts of this one. Royal Rumble is actually the middle game of a sort of trilogy; 1992’s Super Wrestlemania is a more basic version and a prequel, while WWF Raw came along in 1994 with a bit more detail and an updated roster. Ultimately, I prefer Royal Rumble. It captures most of the wrestlers I remember from the television shows, and it’s a good compromise between simplicity and innovative play design.

The game features 12 WWF Superstars, five of which depend on what console you use to rumble. Much like the Soul Calibur series features console-specific characters for today’s gamers, your roster in Royal Rumble was different if you were playing on a Genesis. If you were a Hulk Hogan fan, you wanted that version. If, like me, wanted to style and profile with Ric Flair, you went with the SNES version.  Both versions featured the big WWF names of the time: Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Lex Luger (known at that time as The Narcissist), Bam Bam Bigelow, Crush, and the immortal Macho Man Randy Savage. The SNES-specific roster was filled out by Flair, Tatanka, sumo villain Yokozuna, Mr. Perfect, and the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase. The Genesis swaps those out for IRS (yes, a gimmick villain who works for the Internal Revenue Service), Rick Martel (The Model),  a voodoo-themed guy named Papa Shango, and my personal favorite when I was a kid, Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

The complete roster for both versions. Top row, left to right: Bret Hart, Crush, Hulk Hogan, IRS, Jim Duggan, Lex Luger (Narcissist). Second row: Mr. Perfect, Papa Shango, Randy Savage, Razor Ramon, Ric Flair (WOOOOOO), Rick Martel (The Model). Bottom: Shawn Michaels, Tatanka, Ted DiBiase, Undertaker, Yokozuna.

Players can pick their favorite wrestlers and step into the squared circle with a friend or the CPU. Singles, tag teams, even three-man tag… you can do it all in exhibitions or tournaments, and the “brawl” game type allows you to duke it out with no referee and no holds barred! You can go for the belts that way, or you can select a grappler and go for the ultimate prize… winner of the Royal Rumble itself. The controls take a minute to figure out when you first sit down and plug this game in, but once you’ve got them, you’ve got them. Every wrestler has the same punches and kicks, and can run the ropes and “lock up” with an opponent using other buttons. There’s not a lot of complex combos or anything, which is nice if you like a break from other fighting games. Once you’ve locked up, pick a button and tap it as fast as you can to overpower your foe and hurl him to the mat with any of several moves. Wrestling fans will recognize the suplexes, body slams, and hip tosses they all know and love, and if these are used cleverly, you can even hurl the other guy out of the ring like a sack of potatoes. When you’re out there (or if you manage to conk out the ref for a minute), you can do some underhanded moves like choke your opponent or even thumb his eye. All participants in a match have “life bars” that represent how much damage and abuse they can handle before they’re all out of gas and the fight has left them. In “brawl” matches, the loser is the first one to lose all his meter, while all it does in refereed matches or the Rumble is make you tired and easier to pin or throw out. Finally, every wrestler has his own special move, just like the “real” thing! All of them are activated by pressing the R button (SNES) or the A+B buttons (Genesis, although if you had the 6 button pad you could press X). The moves require your foe to be beaten all the way down, or close to it, and each wrestler has to stand in a specific place or have things set up right to make it happen. For instance, Randy Savage’s famous elbow drop can only be done off the turnbuckle while your foe is prone nearby, and Ric Flair’s signature Figure Four requires you to press the button while standing at a prone opponent’s feet.

Gallery

The graphics for both versions are fairly good, although the SNES version looks slightly more polished. The sound effects are comical, involving a lot of grunts and moans of pain. They don’t vary from character to character. The music is comprised mainly of the wrestlers’ entrance themes; otherwise, there is no music while you sweat and bleed under the lights. There is only the monotone howling of the virtual crowd. I will say that while the SNES’s music will always sound goofy and “fluffy” to me, both versions do a good job of representing the actual pieces of music.

Odds are, you played this game (And maybe even liked it) even if you weren’t a fan of WWF or wrestling. I was a fan, and I loved it. I give Royal Rumble 7 out of 10. It’s a fun, easy-to-learn game with very adjustable difficulty, and it offers a lot of choices and control to the player. It’s not a legend or a must-have title, but I often see it underrated by others who review retro games.

Stay tuned, RetroManiacs! More action at the end of the month.